


Photographs and Memories (The Restless Sleepers Remix)

by AstroGirl



Category: Doctor Who
Genre: Gen, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Introspection, Loss, Remix
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-20
Updated: 2019-08-20
Packaged: 2020-09-19 09:42:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,024
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20329078
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AstroGirl/pseuds/AstroGirl
Summary: He always loses them.  But they're never really gone.





	Photographs and Memories (The Restless Sleepers Remix)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [pamymex3girl](https://archiveofourown.org/users/pamymex3girl/gifts).
  * Inspired by [Screams of the mind](https://archiveofourown.org/works/535162) by [pamymex3girl](https://archiveofourown.org/users/pamymex3girl/pseuds/pamymex3girl). 

> This is a remix of "Screams of the Mind" by pamymex3girl, written for Remix Revival, because I somehow couldn't seem to resist remixing an angsty character piece instead of something with an actual plot. I've moved the Doctor's POV forward in canon a bit, to somewhere just before the start of series 10, and thrown in some Classic Who allusions for good measure.

He puts the pictures on his desk because that's what you're supposed to do.

It's what humans do, right? Put pictures of their families on their desks. And he needs to blend in. He's going to be here for a very long time.

That's the only reason. It's not nostalgia. It certainly isn't masochism.

But every day, he looks at them: his dead wife, his long-lost granddaughter. And every day, they look back at him.

He remembers once, lifetimes ago, eons ago, Victoria asking him about his family. Victoria, deep in her own grief and looking for comfort. He had to really _want_ to remember them, he told her, to bring them back in front of his eyes. The rest of the time, he said, they sleep in my mind, and I forget.

They aren't sleeping now. They're staring at him from his desk.

He hasn't thought about Victoria in a long, long time. He was so much younger then. He'd lost so little, and thought he'd lost so much.

He'd wonder how she's doing now, but "now" is so relative, so meaningless. Everyone he's ever known is still out there. Everyone he's ever known is gone.

When he closes his eyes, he can see Victoria, too. He can see all of them. Some of them, in his memory, are smiling. Some of them... really, _really_ aren't.

He opens his eyes again. The photos are still in front of him. 

Susan. He told her one day he'd come back, but he never did. Not really. He couldn't bear it, the thought of losing her all over again. But he never stopped trying to replace her.

River, dying from the day he met her, always already gone, even when she was there. 

She's still there, somewhere. A copy of her, at least. Everything she ever was, still there, still real, still, in some sense, alive. He could see her any time he wants to.

He won't. He can't. He has to let the people who are gone from his life stay gone. For the sake of his sanity. For the sake of carrying on.

Is that brave of him, or cowardly? He honestly doesn't know.

He doesn't really need the photos. He can still see them. All of them. His children. His friends. The ones who left him smiling. The ones who left him screaming. The ones who died.

Well, almost all of them. One of them is a gap, an absence. Like a space where a missing tooth should be. Or a missing part of his heart. It's not good for him, not being able to remember. It makes him want to prod at the missing tooth. At all of the missing teeth. To cling harder to all the memories he does have, even if he thinks that clinging too hard was, perhaps, the problem with Clara in the first place.

It isn't good for him to be alone, that's part of the problem, too. When he's with someone, it's easy to think less about all the people he isn't with. Easy to focus on the person who's actually there. His traveling companion, his responsibility, his current favorite person in the world. There and alive and in need of looking after.

That's _definitely_ part of the problem. You can't really have a traveling companion when you're not traveling, can you?

And, yes, all right, there's Nardole. But Nardole's not his friend. Nardole's his inheritance, his second-hand sidekick, his watcher who watches the watcher. Never mind how much time they spend together, how easily they fling their friendly insults at each other, how many evenings they spend playing inventive variations on boring Earth board games or talking about River without ever mentioning her name. Nardole's longer-lived than the humans, but one day he'll be gone, too, and the Doctor will still be here, still _right here_, and he refuses to get too attached. Because how will he move on, when he can't move? Running away has always been the only answer he's known.

So. That's it, then. He's done with getting close to humans. Done with new best friends. From now on, for at least the next millennium, it'll be just him and his photos and his memories, and his best enemy down in the vault.

Maybe they were always meant for this, the Master and him. Maybe they deserve each other. She's lost things, too, hasn't she? Her schemes, her freedom, her sanity. Their friendship, the way it used to be.

He wonders what she sees when she closes her eyes. Wonders if there are faces she remembers. If she ever hears the screams of those she's betrayed.

Maybe she does. They've always had a great deal in common.

It's probably better this way: the two of them alone together. (Yes, yes, with Nardole, too. For now.) This way he won't lose anyone else. It's not like she's going anywhere, after all. It's not like she ever, ever dies. He knows. He's tried.

Maybe over the next thousand years, the rest of them will go back to sleep in his mind. Maybe one day he won't see Amy and Rory's tombstones, won't hear Donna begging him not to rip himself viciously out of her life, won't hear Tegan telling him "it's stopped being fun," or see the flash of the impact marking Adric's brave and pointless death. Won't turn around expecting the Brigadier to be standing behind him rolling his eyes. Won't remember holding the body of a daughter who never should have existed and weeping as if he'd lost his family all over again. Won't think about the War and the screaming he caused, and the unforgivable thing he did, even if he didn't do it in the end. Maybe he'll finally find some strange, still form of peace without them. It could happen. Really. It could.

But he doesn't take the pictures down.

And when the girl starts showing up unregistered to his classes, drinking in every drop of knowledge and wonder he has to share with excited, hungry eyes, he finds himself thinking, traitorously: _maybe not yet_. 

Maybe not quite yet.


End file.
